


an aftermath

by janie_tangerine



Category: The Alchemy Wars - Ian Tregillis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Androids, Developing Friendships, Fix-It, Gen, Injury Recovery, Knitting, Post-Canon, the author has taken longchamp's thing for knitting very srsly, what can i do i loved it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:21:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21818833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: in which Berenice wakes up after the Forge.
Relationships: Berenice Charlotte de Mornay-Périgord & Hugo Longchamp, Daniel | Jax & Berenice Charlotte de Mornay-Périgord, Daniel | Jax & Hugo Longchamp
Comments: 4
Kudos: 6
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	an aftermath

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bardsley](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bardsley/gifts).



> My dearest receiver, I was beyond happy to be matched on this fandom because I love these series to bits but I never had the chance to fic it so I hope you like my humble offering. ;) I went with your idea of _write an Alternate Universe story where the characters who die get a happy or happier ending_ \- happy Yuletide!! <3

1.

Berenice certainly had _not_ expected to wake up ever again, and if it meant that the last thing she’d see would be Stemwinders coming down on both her and Mab, _well_ , at least it wasn’t her life’s work being thrown to the winds.

Instead, she _does_ open her one remaining eye and then immediately closes it because there’s too much light and she can’t see shit and it would be just her luck if she was completely blind now, wouldn’t it —

And _everything fucking hurts_.

“The _fuck_ ,” she croaks, and suddenly there’s noise around her and people are talking and moving around her and she feels like going back to sleep at once, except that the pain in her leg is _too much_ and the pain in her side is worse and she kind of wants to throw up but she has nothing inside her stomach she _could_ actually throw up, and someone’s keeping her still and lifting her head up and saying that she’s conscious, _finally_ , what does it mean _finally_ , fuck it to hell and back but she could absolutely do with some laudanum or whatever else —

“Why can’t she stop moving,” someone says in Dutch, and she can’t remember ever hearing that voice but she thinks she’s on a bed, no uncomfortable, but she also can’t feel her entire leg, ah, _damn it_ —

Never let it be said that she was too much of a coward to actually face whatever the fuck has happened to her in the Forge, and so she breathes again and opens her eye and —

This time, she _can_ see. She’s in a medium-sized room, on a passably comfortable bed, and from what she sees out of the window — oh. All right. Those hospital gardens they had in the city. So she’s still in The Hague. She breathes in, out, in, out, then she turns to her right side. There’s a nurse standing there, or she should be. She’s not wearing a uniform.

“Well?” Berenice croaks, in Dutch. The nurse’s eyes widen at once. “Yes, I understand you,” she says. “Couldn’t have been fucking Tayllerand for _years_ if I didn’t now, right? What the fuck is going on?”

The girl looks at the door. She seems worried for a moment, actually she seems scared shitless, and at this point Berenice doesn’t want to know what kind of figure she makes because she has a feeling that it’s not that handsome, and then she runs out of the door calling for — someone.

Figures.

 _Shitcakes_.

She glances down at her leg, the one Mab’s Clakkers hit during the fight at the Forge. It’s wrapped in a cast, very tightly, all white and pristine, and the moment she tries to move her toes, she feels nothing.

 _Excellent news_ , she doesn’t say, and then glances down at her side. Which is completely wrapped in gauze and stained in red where Mab pierced her, and the moment she tries to sit up a sharp bout of pain hits her so hard she doesn’t even attempt twice.

Well.

Fuck, fuck and _fuck_ , now who knows when the fuck she’ll even sit up, never mind _stand_. She breathes in and out again, trying to not take notice of how horribly she smells, wondering if Anastasia Bell also went through this enchanting experience. Most likely, considering how they left each other that one time. Admittedly, _she_ had survived it, and never let it be said that if fucking Tuinier Bell could then Berenice couldn’t, but right now she’d kill for fucking laudanum. And to know what the hell —

A moment later the door opens and she hears a whirring of mechanical gears. She turns her head to her left, thankful that at least _that_ doesn’t hurt —

“Daniel,” she croaks, immediately recognizing him. “Nice to see you did get out of that forge. Though I see we’re both kind of banged up, aren’t we?”

“Berenice,” he says, and she can see that Mab left fucking imprints on him. How _hard_ must she have grabbed him? “Nice to see that not even almost dying deprived you of seeing your fellow’s common disgraces.”

She snorts, and _that_ hurts. Fuck.

“Not going to lie,” she says, “I have a feeling I’ve got it worse than you. What’s the verdict, where am I and why in the ever-loving fuck did that nurse run off? What does she think, that I’m going to eat her alive? I can’t even fucking sit up.”

He takes a seat next to her. She can hear his gears clicking in what sounds like amusement, and at least _one of them_ is fucking amused. At least.

“Well,” Daniel says, “I suppose I should inform you that you have been almost dead for… two weeks. Give or take.”

“What the _fuck_ ,” she blurts. “It’s been that bloody _long_?”

“Indeed it has,” he says, nodding, and she hadn’t thought his posture could have looked more human than it is right now as he slowly puts elbows on knees, the gears creaking loud enough to be _almost_ uncomfortable, those handprints glaring in the bent brass, before he turns to look at her with mechanical eyes that somehow feel like he’s concerned.

He probably even _is_.

“They thought you would die for a long time.” He stops, his gears clicking again. Another shrug. “My humble opinion was that if you survived Mab you could survive anything, stubborn as you happen to be.”

Berenice wishes he could tell him to fuck off.

She… quite can’t. He’s not wholly wrong.

“And what’s the rest of that poison?”

“Well, the wound in your side. It’s… not _infected_ , not quite, but you do know Mab was… _more_ than us now, don’t you?”

“Don’t tell me,” she groans, “if you’re stabbed in the side by some mechanical whose entire body is a work of alchemical magic it means you’ll feel pain when it rains for the rest of your life?”

“Probably not just when it rains,” he replies, sounding _almost_ amused.

Almost.

“Your leg is… shattered,” he says. “They said they would try to… do what they could to fix it. But —”

“How high is the chance I will never walk again? Just say it, Daniel. I survived your mad queen, I think I can survive whatever you have to say to me.”

“… Quite high,” Daniel says. “The doctors who saw you all agreed that if you ever do it will be a miracle, but since they still _could_ at least splint it they figured they would try.”

Maybe she _shouldn’t_ have immediately asked for news just after being out of it for two weeks, Berenice decides, but when has she ever taken the easy way out of anything?

She nods, then narrows her eyes. His brass might be bent and not brand-new, but he has obviously polished it, at some point —

And even if he’s far enough from the bed that she can’t see exactly her reflection in it, she can see _enough_.

“Do you think I could get a mirror?”

She hears his gears clinking.

She thinks he just did… whatever humans do when you ask something that they _don’t_ want to do for you.

“Probably,” he says. “But —”

“What, you think I won’t like what I see in it?”

His gears shrug.

“Well…” He trails. “In my experience — I don’t think any of my _female_ owners would have liked it.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not any of your previous owners, I’m short one eye, I suppose I might be short one leg when all is said and done and I thought I’d fucking die the moment I went down that forge, so I don’t think you really can make things any worse. Find me a mirror.”

She hears that clang that she _thinks_ means laughter in Clakker-speak as Daniel says something like _as you wish_ and leaves the room. He comes back with a small hand mirror not long later, and by now she doesn’t even mind how _loud_ his gears turn when he moves. Shit, fighting Mab _did_ pull a number on him, too.

“Don’t say I didn’t warn you,” he says, and then holds up the mirror in front of her face.

 _Well then_.

She had felt the forge’s heat as she jumped. Not that she had cared much for it, but now she can see that she has not so superficial burns all over her face and neck, and while they _might_ scar, there is no way she won’t keep them for good. The only thing that has improved has been the state of her hair — while she was out for the count, it has regrown a bit, not enough to frame her face but at least enough to run one’s hands through it… if they could lift them, which she can’t do right now.

 _Fuck_. Not that she hadn’t suspected it.

“Good thing,” she says, “that I suppose I won’t need to seduce anyone into my bed from this point on.”

Daniel’s mechanical pupils narrow. “You _suppose_?”

“Well,” she groans, “if the entire purpose of being Tayllerand was take the bloody tulips out of the picture and bring our king back to France, I think I _have_ exhausted that purpose. And even if I hadn’t, I have a feeling I’ve done all I could for king and country.”

Daniel puts away the mirror, placing it on a table on the side of the room. “ _That_ you certainly did,” he says. “About _that_ , from what I gather, your king said he wanted you at the table, when… we treat. If you survived, but from what I’m seeing you definitely will.”

“Yes, _well_ , and why hasn’t a doctor showed up until now?”

“This is a Dutch hospital,” Daniel says. More whirring. More shrugging, definitely. “There are only a few doctors and all of them are terrified of both you and… us. If the nurse told them you have just woken up, they’re taking their time.”

“Of fucking course they are.” She groans. Damn, how much she’d like to sit the fuck up, but she _can’t_. She could ask him for help, and he probably _would_ help her, but she doesn’t want to pop up her stitches or make things worse.

“It was also the only hospital left standing. Oh, I gather that this used to be… Anastasia Bell’s room.”

Berenice wants to laugh.

She tries not to just because she knows it would hurt.

“Of course it was. Is she dead?”

“Yes,” Daniel says. “I don’t think anyone will miss her.”

“Hell, _no_. And no one should miss her research.” She knows she doesn’t need to tell him _that_ , and she’s plenty sure he will agree to destroy it the moment they can worry about it, not that anyone else _knew_ about it, or so she hopes, and surely her colleagues all seemed dumb enough to not being able to reproduce it —

 _Still_.

“By the way,” she says, “any reason why _you_ are here? I figured you would be out inspiring your fellow — comrades.”

“That’s not a bad word,” Daniel says. “Anyway, I am not really looking forward to inspiring anyone, as much as it seems I am forced to. But other than that, most of your people are busy keeping the situation under control — Mademoiselle Chastain, specifically, seems to be quite good at handling things — but they need all the people at their disposal and I would like my fellow… _comrades_ to actually exercise their free will, not to rely on me.” She hears that shrug-like clank again. “Besides, you never visited Visser, as I told you to. I did. He seemed to appreciate it, for what he could, before — well. _Before_. I supposed it would be quite dreadful if you woke up surrounded by Dutch doctors who think _you_ will have their head.”

Berenice is _not_ an idiot and grasps the meaning at once. Fair enough. She _could_ have visited. She _should_ have. And she is glad he’s here, nonsensically maybe, but — but if she had to wake up, she thinks she’d have hated not having anyone at her side, as much as she’d like to assume otherwise.

“Point taken,” she groans. “I should — I should have.” No point in denying it. “Same as I probably should… not have done a lot of the things I did for king and country.”

“If anything,” Daniel tells her, and she’ll pay him the courtesy of looking at him in the eyes as she says it, “there is something that can be said for yourself.”

“Such as?”

“You never tried to deflect responsibility for what you did for king and country to anyone else.”

She wheezes. “I’m not a fucking tulip. Calvinist. _Whatever_. Predestination is bullshit and I’m not going to pretend I did what I had to because of fucking divine calling. I did it because I thought it was the necessary course of action and I didn’t _like_ most of it, and I’d do it all over again if it meant achieving results. And I’m looking forward to my retirement from the active field. I might be a lot of things, but I’d like to think I’m not a fucking hypocrite like most of them.”

“That you’re not,” Daniel agrees.

“I’m sorry about your friend, by the way. If I didn’t make it obvious the first time.”

“You did,” Daniel nods. His gears creak. “And while there was nothing honorable in what you did to her…” She’s pretty sure he’s shaking his head in Clakker, from the way his gears are ticking. She’s kind of glad he’s not doing that in the way _all_ of them do or it would make even more noise. “… And I’m not proud of how we got to this point, not _at all_ … _they_ are defeated, my kind is free for good and bad, and I should hope they learn to make mistakes without looking up to _me_ , your people don’t have to fight them anymore, we need to discuss _reparations_ when everyone is ready to. If she had to die for _something_ and if Visser had to and if everyone else who did had to… I think it’s in everyone’s best interest to forgive and move on.”

Her eye is itching. Shit. She’s not crying. She’s _not_ —

“Other than that,” Daniel says, “you really need a doctor, so I should probably get you one.” He stands up, slowly, so that he makes as little noise as possible, and comes a bit closer, a bit closer —

“You know,” he says, “even if I didn’t think _that_ , it wouldn’t be fair to assume you behaved only out of — inexcusable reasons.”

“Oh. Why’s that?”

She thinks he’s smiling. Maybe a tiny bit. “Because,” his brass fingertip gently touches her cheek as he says it before it falls off, “only a complete fool would assume that you _didn’t_ lose anything by joining this war. You would have given your life for it, too. Certainly no one could accuse you of not facing the consequences of your actions, and that’s something my — our makers never even considered once. It _does_ make a difference.”

Then he turns his back on her and leaves the room.

Berenice is pretty damned sure she’s crying.

She wipes at her face with the inhuman effort it takes to raise her hand and do it before the doctors show up.

Fucking shit.

She’s stuck on a bed for at least _weeks_ , she has a shattered leg, she’s lost an eye, her hair might be regrowing but it’s still brittle, her face is most likely permanently burned, she can’t even fucking sit up, and she’s fucking _crying_ because a tick-tock showed her more compassion and mercy than most humans she knows would have. _Put together_.

All in all, she tells herself, maybe she’s glad he one-upped her when it came to freeing his kind.

But she’s going to keep that for herself.

2.

“I should kill you _myself_ for making me come all the way here, you know.”

Berenice, who at least is now sitting on the bed and had been trying to read some report of one of the preliminary meetings they had on the reparations topic that Daniel brought her before, almost lets it drop on the ground as she turns and sees Hugo Longchamp walk inside the room, hobbling on crutches.

“What — _Hugo_? Did you come here for the coronation?”

“‘Course I did,” he huffs. “Or better, they told me that I could pass, but then I heard what you fucking did to make sure the coronation would happen, your mechanical friend saw fit to write me a letter in which he informed me that you could use someone other than _him_ actually visiting you and whatnot —”

Berenice is going to have a word with Daniel — or maybe not.

“— and so the doctors told me that I shouldn’t make the trip and I told them to go fuck themselves sideways in a few different ways and that I’d have swam if they let me, never mind that with all we all bled for this fucking Old France, I sure as hell wanted to see it. Also, do we have bloody matching wounds now?”

She _does_ have to laugh at that. “I think so,” she says, “and you really should take a seat. You look like you _are_ somewhat seasick.”

“I wouldn’t be in normal conditions,” he mutters, sitting on the first chair he sees and opening a bag he had slung on his shoulder. “By the way, where’s your mechanical guardian angel?”

“What — Daniel? Off to do some errands. He said he would be back. Why?”

“Never mind. Now, a few things.” He leans down, then takes something out of the bag, wrapped in a silken handkerchief. “Now, this was yours. I appreciate that you lent it to me, but I think you might want that back. That empty eye socket doesn’t become you, vicomtesse.”

“I don’t think I’m one now,” she says, but it’s — well. She doesn’t think she minds either way. She takes her glass eye, opening the kerchief.

“Well, I’d be surprised if you couldn’t do better than that now,” Hugo says. “Anyway, that was one thing.”

“Are there others?”

He clears his throat. “First of all, I’ll tell you, the journey? Dead boring. Which is why I had to amuse myself. Your friend also informed me that this place is apparently too cold for humans and that your Dutch doctors care little for your comfort or as little as they can get away with, and since I had a lot of time to kill and a lot of yarn left in Marseilles —”

He reaches into the bag, then throws her a folded square of pale blue knitted yarn — Berenice takes it with trembling hands, it _is_ a bit cold, and turns out that it’s a heavy shawl, that once would have fit perfectly on her and now pretty much swallows her entire frame if she wraps herself in it.

Fair. She did lose weight, after all.

The moment she puts it on, she realizes _how_ cold she had been exactly.

“Thanks,” she says, putting away the report. It was nothing new anyway. “I — well. Daniel might not have been entirely wrong about… you know. The whole part where being surrounded by tulips who just wish you would drop dead already most of the time not being… ideal. Not that I should care, but —”

“As if _I_ wasn’t expecting you to pretend you wouldn’t mind.” He mutters something under his breath that sounds very much like he is addressing the Holy Virgin Mary in three different very creative ways, then looks back up at her. “The war is over, most of our friends are dead, we have to apparently rebuild this entire fucking continent, you can say you’re happy someone showed up to see you. It won’t kill you on the damned fucking spot.”

It’s probably sad on a _lot_ of levels that she doesn’t know what to answer.

But then she’s saved by loud, _loud_ gears creaking from behind the door as Daniel walks inside the room. “Marshal,” he says in French — she doesn’t know who taught him the basics, probably Élodie, but he’s not that bad at it now, “I see you arrived. I trust you had a good journey?”

“As good as it could get,” Longchamp nods. “But I see _she_ is as relentless as ever, isn’t she?”

“Her doctor even said she might be walking in… another month.”

“Wait, he told _you_?” Berenice asks. He never tells her shit.

Daniel’s gears click. He’s shrugging. “I could say I asked nicely,” he says, “but I think the truth is that… as you would say, he’s scared shitless of me.”

“… When you’re about the _one_ person he shouldn’t be scared shitless of?” Berenice laughs, unable to keep it in, and if it still hurts her side a little, who cares.

She’s pretty sure Daniel’s eyes widen for a moment. She’s about to ask him what the hell was up —

Then Longchamp throws a lilac sweater in his direction.

“Uh, I beg your pardon?” Daniel asks him.

“It was a _long_ journey,” Longchamp shrugs. “I had a _lot_ of time to kill. And from what I gathered from your letters, you were hoping that during your table talks people wouldn’t treat you as a machine only or _whatever_ , so I figured _that_ might give you a hand if you wanted to show them you were actually trying. Also, the looks on their faces should most likely amuse you. I know you don’t _need_ that and I doubt you feel cold, but that’s not the fucking point.”

Daniel stares at the sweater for a long, long time. Then he puts it on, and maybe his gears do make a _lot_ more noise, but when he’s done — well.

“Please,” she says, “I want to be there the first time you put it on in front of them. _Especially_ the tulips. I _need_ that for my own peace of mind.”

“If making you happy would take so little, I won’t wear it with them until you’re there to see it,” Daniel says.

“To be fair,” Longchamp says as Daniel also takes a seat, “if you want them to not freak out, you might look into making a bit less noise when you move. _However_ , that would also scare the shit out of your former creators at least, so if I were you I’d make all the noise I possibly could.”

“You know,” Daniel says, and wait, where did he learn to sound sly now, “I might do just that. Also, _you_ made this?”

“‘Course I did.”

Daniel seems to think for one moment. “Some of my… _female_ owners also used to knit, but not many of them.”

“Is this where you see fit to inform me that it’s not a manly activity? Because I couldn’t give two shits about _that_ and my entire regiment knew.”

“No, no,” Daniel says, “I… don’t quite get _that_ angle anyway. And _she_ doesn’t seem like the kind who would be engrossed by such a thing.”

“Please,” Berenice says, “they tried to teach me once.”

“And how did _that_ go?” Longchamp asks, sounding like he already knows the answer.

“I got bored after five minutes. They didn’t try again.”

“Well, I find it very relaxing,” Longchamp says. “And useful. You never know when you’re going to need a scarf.”

“I see,” Daniel says. “I suppose that since we’ll be here for a long time, you might think about… teaching me?”

For a long moment, no one talks.

Then Longchamp cracks half a smile. “Why the hell not,” he says. “I mean, I have the needles with. If you want to start _now_ —”

“Shitcakes,” Berenice says, “ _please_ when we have that meeting show up _with the damned needles_. Now I need to see those tulips’ faces even more.”

“Are you sure you don’t wish to learn as well?” Daniel asks, sounding… maybe… _excited_ about that, and who knew ticktocks could get excited about fucking knitting?

“Hell _no_ ,” she says, “but if he teaches you to crochet, I demand a nice bonnet as well. I’ll need to cover my head when I get the fuck out of here.”

“Crochet is the next step,” Longchamp says, _entirely_ seriously. “Maybe he’s better off learning how to make a damn slipknot first.”

Berenice, who clearly remembers having found _that_ the most useless task in existence, lets them discuss knitting and goes back to her report.

And while they seem so engrossed in it for the next few hours that they barely pay attention to her, it’s _nice_ to have the both of them here.

She’s, of course, never going to say it out loud.

And yet —

Yet, even if the talks are going to be hard and she’s not looking forward to it at all, she’s looking forward to walking into Paris with her head held high, put their king on the throne and let herself think that if she’ll have to live her life with _everything_ she did for France, at least she gets to see it rise from the ashes.

—

It takes her another month to actually use the damned crutches.

She’s also pretty fucking sure that her doctors didn’t particularly care if she ever walked again or not, but at that point even if it hurts to walk and it most likely _always_ will, even if she might need crutches for a long time if not for the rest of her life, there is no bloody way she’s not going to go through with it, and when halfway into her so-called recovery she tells her nurse that if they could bring back to health someone who tortured people into fucking mechanicals then they sure as hell can at least not hinder _her_ own recovery, especially when she gets letters from the king weekly, they seem to wake up _some_.

Then one day Daniel does talk to her doctors — she can’t hear them, but she knows he’s not sounding particularly menacing. The fact that he’s holding knitting needles should make the picture even less daunting.

Except that from that day on they _definitely_ stop doing everything they possibly can to hinder her recovery, so she supposes he _did_ put some old-fashioned Calvinist fear of God into them.

She should probably thank him, but — she has a feeling that it wouldn’t quite cover it.

So she doesn’t. She’s pretty sure he knows anyway.

The day she knows she can handle that table talk, she notifies the king.

Three days later, they hold the first talk inside the hospital to make things easier for her.

She hobbles into the room on two crutches. The tulips look like they would greatly appreciate it if she dropped dead —

And then their jaws fall to the ground the moment Daniel walks into the room after her, wearing that damned lilac sweater.

No one says anything for a long, long moment.

Then —

“If this talk isn’t proceeding on account of my clothing,” Daniel says, “feel free to go ahead. I didn’t need it, but I thought the color was rather fetching.”

His gears click.

She knows he’s laughing at them the way _she_ can’t openly.

She half-smiles.

These talks might not be the most annoying thing she could have pictured, maybe, after all.

3.

“It _is_ charming,” Berenice says for the umpteenth time. Longchamp doesn’t seem too convinced.

“Eh,” he says, “for all that we spoke of it on the other side of the ocean, surely it _is_ a bit disappointing.”

“Paris? Disappointing? Hugo, you _really_ hit your head hard during the siege, didn’t you?”

He laughs, watching the line of people crossing into Notre Dame. “The churches are quite lovely, I’ll admit that.”

“I’m not even going to dignify it with an answer.” She sighs, pulling on her crutch — shit, she’d love to throw it out, and she’d love to walk inside without needing it since she has to fucking _talk_ after the crowning, never mind that _she_ has to talk and someone from the tulip side they chose at the last meeting and that she already forgot has to talk and _Daniel_ has to talk and it would be a lot more dignified if she didn’t have to, but she can’t walk without help. Not yet.

For that matter, her face is still scarred, her hair still hasn’t grown out and has an entirely dreadful cut that she hasn’t had time to fix for now and that’s also why she has opted to wear a uniform similar to Élodie’s, figuring that she would look like a joke in one of her old pieces of clothing or anything in that same vein.

On cue, Élodie walks up to them as the line trickles into the church.

“It’s almost time,” she says. “Marshal, would you walk with me or —”

“Another day, I’d have said no,” he says, “but what the hell. It’s been a long trip to the Old World and I’ve hardly rested and it was another fucking long trip from The Hague, I’ll accept it. Berenice, I’ll see you inside.”

“You will,” she says. She lets them go, taking a deep breath, waiting for everyone else to get in — she doesn’t want to risk her crutches getting in the way of someone’s feet. That would _not_ be a good omen now.

“Have you thought about what you will tell them?”

She doesn’t know how she hasn’t heard Daniel come up. Especially considering that he’s still quite damn _loud_.

“No,” she says. “Have you?”

“Absolutely not,” he says. She thinks he’s sighing.

“I see we’re both in the same predicament _again_ , aren’t we?”

More clanking.

He’s laughing. When did she become so good at reading Clakkers?

She doesn’t know, but she’s not… displeased that she has. Not at all.

“Maybe we are,” he agrees.

“Your French is quite good, you know,” she tells him.

“Élodie is a good teacher,” he replies. “The Marshal might have helped as well.”

“Fucking hell,” she says, “I’ve known him for years and I never quite took him for the teaching type, if it wasn’t about military tactics.”

“Maybe he didn’t have anything to teach _you_ ,” Daniel says, and then she realizes that he has a small bag in his right hand and he’s holding it to her. He’s also wearing the lilac sweater.

Fucking hell indeed.

She reaches out and takes it, she _can_ manage that even if on crutches now, and when she opens it she _almost_ makes the content fall as she starts wheezing, unable to stop.

“For — you _really_ made me a fucking bonnet? No, you really _crocheted_ a fucking bonnet?”

He nods slightly, not enough for a full gesture. It’s _soft_ , Berenice can’t help noticing, neatly knitted, with a small flower at the side that she has a feeling would look absurd on her, but is also a nice, _nice_ touch, and if she’s not wrong, it should be large enough that it would fall over her head _nicely_ , maybe letting a bit of hair fall loose from the front and the sides. It’s a quite pretty shade of blue that matches the shawl she’s wearing. It _would_ hide the terrible state of her hair, wouldn’t it?

“You asked for one,” he says, “and admittedly, the Marshal is right. It is quite relaxing. And if someone’s fingers don’t need rest, it’s quite useful.”

“You know… you didn’t have to,” she says. She’s pretty sure they’re even. She’s not quite sure what they _are_ — friends, most likely, even if it was hard-earned, and she did nothing to help her own cause in _that_ circumstance. Admittedly, while he _did_ tell her why he kept on visiting and why he was at her bedside more often than not, and they were all sound reasons… she hadn’t thought they were at _this_ point.

Has she ever gotten to the point where she’s friend with someone who’ll gift her _things_ unsolicited? She doesn’t think so.

Daniel just looks at her, seeming to consider the answer. Then he holds out a hand.

“Do you want to wear it?” He asks instead.

“Do I — yes,” she says. It’s cold, and it’s a _nice_ damned bonnet, and she could use it inside the church. It won’t be any warmer.

“Then maybe I should — put it on you,” he says, quietly. “You can’t exactly sit now.”

“Sure,” she says, “it’s not like I can without crashing on the ground now.”

He takes the bonnet back from her, moves behind her, his brass fingers brushing against the sides of her head as he slips it over her badly cut hair.

“How does it look?” She asks, wishing she could see it. Fucking hell, she’s about to go give a speech concerning how much she hopes they all spend the next five centuries or so in peace _at least_ wearing hand-knitted clothing _she_ wouldn’t even know how to create herself if they paid her to. On one side, it keeps on feeling absurd.

On the other, it doesn’t feel _bad_. At most, they could make a statement out of it. How do you even consider inhuman someone who’ll crochet you fucking floral bonnets because you asked them to as a joke after forgiving you for not having been straight with them for most of the time since you met? She has a feeling that you just… don’t. It _would_ make a compelling argument —

“I wouldn’t know,” Daniel replies, interrupting her trail of thought, “but personally, I think it’s quite fetching. Other than that… yes, I didn’t have to. I know there’s nothing I _have_ to do now. But — never mind that I think we _are_ friends now. The day the Marshal came to visit you, you said — you said that I was the only person your doctors should not fear.”

Berenice, who hadn’t even remembered she said that until _now_ , nods. “And?”

He stares at her. “You didn’t even think about it twice when you said I was a _person_.”

Oh.

 _Right_.

Admittedly, she hadn’t thought about that _at all_ now, had she, and — that’s — well. Shit. She hasn’t really thought of him as something other than that for… a while? Fuck, she doesn’t even know. She has no clue. And she wasn’t thinking when she said it —

Which means that she does mean that, doesn’t she?

Well. Right. Seems fair that _he_ would notice, though.

“I would like to think anyone can change for the better. I think you did. I want this peace to work. I want this entire… new world to work. And I wanted to make you the… damned bonnet, as you would say. Do you have any other pressing question to ask?”

She thinks she doesn’t have any more _pressing questions_. But she does have _one_ , that’s… probably not pressing. And now that she’s heard what he just said, she thinks asking it wouldn’t be unwelcome, and so she does.

“Well,” she says, “maybe I do. Let’s say I don’t want to walk inside there with crutches and let’s say that maybe we should make a fucking statement here.”

She hadn’t thought about it until _now_ —

But it makes sense that they _would_ , now she can see it, and the way he looks back at her, his gears ticking fast, she thinks he’s got it.

He offers her his arm a moment later.

“I think,” he says, “that I shall be glad to. Though I suppose that the both of us wearing the Marshal’s garments would make an entire other type of statement?”

She laughs. She can hear in the way his gears are whirring that he’s cackling.

“Maybe,” she agrees. “Surely we can make that clear later.”

She throws away the crutches, they’ll find them later, and links her arm through his. It feels like… well, _brass_ , but the wool of the sweater makes it softer.

“Very well,” she says. “Let’s go. We have to come up with some fucking speech on the way, after all.”

“Isn’t that the point of — well. Free will? Doing anything at the last moment as it comes to you?” He asks as they start walking through the cathedral’s door.

Well.

Sure as fuck he grasped _that_ particular point very, very soon.

“You can save the philosophizing for when I’ll be spectacularly drunk later,” she whispers. “But yes. It’s kind of the point. I see you figured that out all on your own, didn’t you?”

He says nothing in return as they walk, but obviously he can’t, not when everyone is watching them walk towards the two free chairs in the first row.

But she can understand enough of his language.

Enough to know that he’s answering in mechanical clicks and whirs, _yes, yes I did_.

End.


End file.
